Posts Tagged ‘neologisms’
“The language mint is more than a mint; it is a great manufacturing center, where all sorts of productive activities go on unceasingly”*…
Language is, famously, a living thing. Just how alive is powerfully demonstrated by Merriam-Webster’s Time Traveler: enter a date; see the words and phrases that “officially” entered the language that year.
Your correspondent entered the distant year of his birth… and got a list that ran from anti-matter and carpal tunnel syndrome through federal case and Maoism to sweat equity and tank top.
* Mario Pei
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As we contemplate coinage, we might recall that it was on this date in 1604 that Shakespeare’s Othello was performed for the first time, and on this date in 1611 that The Tempest premiered (both at the Whitehall Palace).
Shakespeare was a prodigious coiner of words and phrases, creating over 1,700 across his works, several hundred of which are still in common use.
“I don’t want just words”*…
ZAGATTITUDE (N.) za-‘gat-i-tood Mindset of one who always has a firm, vocal opinion on where, what and how to eat—informed by Zagats, Chowhound, and other foodie bibles. Usage: They all just wanted pizza, but Blake, flexing his Zagattitude, insisted they go to a pricey new tapas place he’d read about.
Just one of the “Wordbirds“: an illustrated lexicon of neologisms for the 21st century…
* F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned
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As we match plumage with coinage, we might recall that this leap-day (like every “last day in February”) is Rare Disease Day— an occasion devoted to raising awareness of and encouraging action on the too-often horrifying ailments that fall outside the spotlight, but that cumulatively are all-too-common. It’s a great day to adopt an orphan (disease).
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